# texlive-dummy package
This is the README for texlive-dummy-fc44, version
2026-05-19.

**WARNING! This is a serious hack and you should be clear about what you are doing.**

## Background

The texlive packages available for RHEL-8 (and derived
distributions such as CentOS-8) are relatively old
and seriously incomplete. For Fedora, they seem to be more
up-to-date, but still cannot "compete" with TeX-Live's own
distribution mechanism. Although it is possible to
remove the native texlive packages and install a more
recent complete TeXLive distribution, any attempt to
install packages that depend on texlive resources (such
as latex2html, lyx, etc.) will normally trigger the
re-installation of the obsolete native packages. This is
inefficient and the redundant packages can interfere with
the TeXLive resources.

This package contains a "dummy" rpm which is intended
to satisfy any dependencies on texlive resources,
allowing packages like latex2html, lyx, etc. to be
installed without using --nodeps and without triggering
re-installation of texlive rpms. All native texlive packages
will be removed when the texlive-dummy package is installed.

It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that any
necessary resources normally provided by native packages
have in fact been installed. A recent TeXLive distribution
should suffice. If necessary, packages can be installed
directly from CTAN into a local or personal texmf tree.

This version is based on a Fedora 36 installation and is
building on the original CentOS-version by Bob Tennent
(rdt at cs.queensu.ca). Since Bob does not have a
CentOS machine available anymore, the old dummy packages
are a bit outdated. However, this Fedora-based version
should (sic!) work on other RHEL-derived distributions
as well. But your mileage may vary…

The source rpm is included in case the user needs to
add/remove lines to/from the spec file. Please send the
maintainer a note about this so this package can be updated.


## Inner workings and manual updates

A brief intro in how to do this:

Download the src rpm (texlive-dummy-2022-1.fc36.src.rpm) from CTAN.

Create a temporary directory and move the file there.
Now extract the source package:

rpm2cpio texlive-dummy-2022-1.fc36.src.rpm | cpio -idmv


This gives the `texlive-dummy.fc36.spec` file we can
edit to add extra dependecies. E. g., towards the end,
add a little part to include what is needed for the
package you try to install and that still triggers
"dnf" or "yum" to pull in a whole lot of texlive
stuff. Add the required "Provides:" after the last
other "Provides:" and before the line with `%prep`

To find out what is needed, use e.g.

sudo dnf install --assumeno sagemath | \
awk -e '/^ texlive/ {print "Provides: "$1}' >APPEND

This will try to install a package, sagemath in this
case, but since it is assuming "no", nothing will
be done in the end. Yet the required packages are
listed. Extracting those starting with (indented by
one space) "texlive" should give you a good list.
ATTENTION! Some dependent packages do not begin
with "texlive"; biber (included in this version)
is one such example!

To get a complete list of all things provided by the typical Fedora packages for TeX, you can use
```
dnf repoquery --provides tex-cjw tex-preview texlive\* >texlive-provides.txt
```

Now rebuild the rpms:

```
rpmbuild -ba texlive-dummy.fc44.spec
```

This will rebuild both the src and installation
rpm packages and tell you where they are to be
found, usually under
`~/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/texlive-dummy-2026-1.fc44.noarch.rpm`
 and `~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/texlive-dummy-2026-1.fc44.src.rpm`.

Install these by using

```
sudo dnf reinstall ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/texlive-dummy-2026-1.fc44.noarch.rpm
```

If this works for you, please send me your changes
or the updated spec-file. Thanks!

## Updates

UPDATE 19 May 2026:
Added all provisions in Fedora 44 provided by tex-cjw, tex-preview and all texlive\* packages,
sorted and made unique. The list is now longer, should stop F44 reliably from installing
anything related to texlive (and probably a lot too much, but if anyone find something
that should **not** be in this dummy, please let me know). The sorting removed any comments
from the list of Provides:, but that should be no real problem.


Hendrik G Seliger, October 2024
ctan at hseliger dot eu

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
software under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public License
(LPPL), version 1.3c.